


long journey home

by bazookajo94



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Andrew thinks he won't catch feelings for Neil and then whoops he's in love, Dubious Medical Practices, Fallout vibes but not Fallout related, M/M, Medicated Andrew Minyard, Protective Neil Josten, Smuggler Neil Josten, Withdrawal Symptoms, even when they hate each other, he just loves andrew so much you know?, role reversal where Kevin knows nothing and Andrew knows everything, they're really going through it in this one folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26956147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazookajo94/pseuds/bazookajo94
Summary: “Let’s go, then, little rabbit. Looks like you’re our only hope.”“My name is Neil.”“Oh, is it?” Andrew grinned. “Let’s go then, little rabbit. You’re our only Neil.”*The Foxes hire smuggler Neil Josten to kill notorious raider Riko Moriyama with promises of making Neil a Fox and giving him a home. Only Andrew and Neil know that he won't be coming back from the Raven’s Nest alive.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 60
Kudos: 337





	1. black smoke’s a rising and it surely is a train

**Author's Note:**

> *michael klump voice* hello, everybody! 
> 
> im so excited to share this with everyone. it has been an emotional journey to write and i hope it's just as emotional for you to read.
> 
> thanks for being here and i love you

It took them months of following dead ends and false leads until they found the smuggler holed up in an abandoned shack only a few hours outside of the Foxhole’s area.

“I can’t believe he’s been this close this whole time,” Kevin grumped as soon as they caught sight of the supposed home of the notorious smuggler. They didn’t arrive until well into the night, the waxing moon a sliver in the smoky night, stars hardly visible. The shack was old and decaying, but everything was old and decaying these past few days, months, years. This particular dead building was barely big enough to hold a lawnmower, let alone a person, but they were told the smuggler made his home in this vacant field that used to be a farm, crops withered, fields reduced to dust. It was just the shack and miles and miles of nothing. 

Andrew gave his metal bat a few experimental swings the closer they got to the building. Satisfied with its weight, Andrew moved to position himself underneath the back window of the shack. Kevin went around to the front, not commenting on Andrew’s position, and knocked on the dusty door. 

Predictably, there was no answer, no sound at all from inside. Kevin stayed by the front door and didn’t knock again. Andrew waited thirty minutes in the still silence of the dead night before there was movement by the window and Andrew grinned.

Obscured in the shadows, Andrew watched as the smuggler slipped soundlessly from the window. He had a thick swatch of fabric over his face and neck that hid everything except his eyes. He wore black gloves and long pants and thick boots, and really the only thing that Andrew could see of the smuggler were his eyes, but the night was too dark to tell their color. 

Not that it mattered. Andrew unfurled from the shadows and smacked his bat hard into the smuggler’s stomach before he had a chance to leave. 

A hard wheeze, a desperate pull for breath, and then Kevin was rounding the corner and tackling the smuggler before he had a chance to move. 

“Stop,” Kevin demanded as the smuggler wriggled to escape through his tight lungs and maybe even broken ribs. Andrew laughed. 

“You could help,” Kevin said, trying to use the full weight and length of his body to hold the smuggler down, whose escape attempts were getting more desperate. 

“I could,” Andrew replied lightly, twirling the bat again as soon as the smuggler caught his eye. 

“Fuck you,” the boy snapped, and Andrew positioned the top of his bat very close to the tip of the boy’s nose. 

“Ah, ah,” Andrew said. “No need for that. We just have a few questions, that’s all.”

“Sure, and I just have a few mouths to feed. Won’t you let a poor family man go?” His voice was too mocking to be believable, and Andrew crouched down to be closer to eye-level with the smuggler, who was still glaring pure hatred through the depths of his eyes as Kevin held his body pinned to the ground. Andrew wished he could tell what color they were. 

Alas. 

He grinned again. “A family, in these hard times? How do you do it?”

“Effective communication and murdering people who come to your house late at night and hit you with bats.”

“A family that kills together stays together.”

“What is happening here?” Kevin asked, exasperated and gasping as the smuggler tried to escape again. “Andrew, stop it. Smuggler, we need your help.”

“Oh, do you? Sorry, I must have gotten confused with the attack and murder threats.”

“Actually, that was you,” Andrew supplied. 

Andrew thought he saw the smuggler grin, but grinning and frowning looked the same when someone’s mouth was covered. 

“My mistake,” the smuggler said lightly, wriggling his shoulders and trying to slide his right hand in the direction of his pockets. Andrew shot forward and grabbed the roaming hand, flattening it on the ground and tapping his bat on the smuggler’s knuckles in warning. 

“I would stop struggling if I were you,” he told him, and the smuggler growled in frustration. 

“Gonna break my hand, are you?” he spat. “How will you use me then?” 

“You’d still have one working hand.”

“And that’s enough for you?” The smuggler sounded like he was challenging Andrew.

And Andrew always met his challenges. He leaned closer to the smuggler and stage-whispered, “What can’t be done with a hand could be done with a mouth.”

“Andrew, Jesus, can you stop?” Kevin asked. “This is not going the way I thought.”

Andrew sighed, leaning back on his heels. 

“And how did you think this would go?” the smuggler asked Kevin, not looking away from Andrew. Maybe his eyes were green? Maybe blue? Definitely too light to be brown, but Andrew still couldn’t pin down an exact color. 

“Well, for one, you would have just answered the door and then Andrew wouldn’t have had to hit anyone,” Kevin answered, shifting his body into a more comfortable position on top of the smuggler. Finally realizing that he was trapped, the smuggler’s body relaxed into submission.  _ Boring _ , Andrew thought.

“Why wouldn’t I take the chance to hit someone trying to run from the great Kevin Day?” Andrew asked them rhetorically, and Kevin shook his head.

“Fuck, I should have brought Renee.”

Andrew shrugged. “But that wasn’t part of our deal, was it, Day?” Andrew taunted, and laughed when Kevin scowled. 

The smuggler was watching their interaction with bored interest. Once it was clear Kevin would say nothing else, the smuggler met Andrew’s eyes and waited. 

“We hear you’re fast,” Andrew said. 

“Hopefully not too fast for you.”

Andrew still had a few hours before these pills filtered out of his system. He rather liked this batch. He couldn’t hold his tongue, but his mind was fogged enough to find some things interesting in these pointless matters, such as following Kevin to tiny shacks and antagonizing angry boys who fell from windows. He grinned down at the smuggler. “Hopefully.”

*

The two men who knocked on Neil’s door and hit him in his stomach tied his hands behind his back and pointed a gun at him and told him to walk.

Neil, trying to decide how much he could handle a gunshot wound these days, decided to follow without a fuss. They had mentioned hiring him, and it had been a long time since he’d done a job. Probably because for a long time, Neil told himself he wouldn’t be doing another job—that he wouldn’t be doing much of anything anymore. He needed to stop drawing attention to himself, and making a name as a competent smuggler with no affiliations was probably the dumbest thing he’d done since the world went to shit.

Oh well. 

He rolled his shoulders after an hour of silent walking where neither man offered why they wanted to hire him. Neil thought about asking where they were going, but he had a vague idea, based off the direction they were walking away from his house. “Foxes?” he asked blandly, and the manic man with the bat rejoiced.

“He speaks at last!”

“Only because it’s so boring. Weren’t you going to hire me for something, or has all this ‘going along with you quietly’ been a giant waste of my time?”

The manic man took a step closer to Neil so they were walking side by side. His eyes were most certainly not focused the way a lucid person’s eyes should be, and his pupils were dilated.

“And he’s funny, too!” Andrew said, delighted. “Kevin, why haven’t we tried to find him before?”

The man behind Neil, who was pointing the gun and apparently the ring leader of this operation, sighed heavily. “We _have_ tried, Andrew. We’ve been trying to find him for months.”

“Oh, that’s right!” Andrew said, grinning at Neil. “Funny how we found you so close to home.”

“Yeah,” Neil said. “Funny.”

“Were the Foxes your next targets? Someone hire you to steal from us, perhaps?” Andrew mused, twirling his bat again.

“It’s not the first time someone has suggested it.” Though it wasn’t the reason he was so close to the Foxes’ territory. Mostly the Foxes were known to be peaceful—mostly—and Neil figured that if he were caught, he’d have an easier chance slipping away from them than he would any other faction in this wasteland.

“But it will be the last! We need you to kill Riko,” Andrew said suddenly, and Neil couldn’t help his flinch. Andrew’s attention became very intent at the motion, and his eyes stopped looking so hazy, his grin now sharper.

Neil, tired of the games, tired of it all, said, “I’m not an assassin.”

Behind them, Kevin said, “But you are fast enough to get in and out of the Raven’s camp. We know you’ve done it before.”

“Yeah, for like, food and drugs and stuff. I highly doubt I can slip in and kill one of their leaders and just slip away in the dead of night.”

“The Ravens are in the drug trade now?” Kevin asked, ignoring Neil’s valid reservations.

Neil, annoyed, answered, “I guess? And let me just say, based off your bat-slinging friend here, you probably don’t need any more of them.” 

Andrew, eyes widening, threw his head back and laughed. It sounded hollow. “And he knows I’m on medication! What can’t he do?”

Neil resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Well, yeah, I didn’t think you were normally this psycho.”

Andrew stopped laughing but he didn’t drop the smile. It didn’t have much substance, either. Andrew said, “You’d be the first to think that.”

Neil stared at Andrew, at his unhinged expression and glazed eyes getting clearer. “Strange,” he mused.

“Strange indeed,” Andrew replied, but he didn’t look as amused anymore. Maybe the drugs were starting to wear off.

“Anyways,” Neil said, turning away from Andrew. “I’m not going to kill Riko for you.”

“And we’re not going to let you leave until you agree.” Though Kevin hadn’t said much this trek, leaving all his posturing to the manic man, his voice suddenly brooked no argument, and Neil heard the message loud and clear: kill Riko, or be killed himself. 

“It’s a suicide mission.” Neil didn’t want to give too much of his plight away, but he didn’t know how else to express that if we went to kill Riko, who was so close to his father, Neil would not walk away from that camp.

Kevin said, “Not if you do it right.”

“Okay, and then what?” Neil asked, turning to face Kevin. He ignored the gun now pointed at his chest as he glared at his captor. “I just make my merry way back to my shack and no one comes after me?”

“See,” Andrew chimed in, now falling back to walk beside Kevin and face Neil head-on, “we’re hoping if you kill Riko, the rest of the Ravens will fight amongst themselves and leave everyone else alone for a while. We hear they’re already fracturing.”

Neil had heard that as well, but he cared so little about the Ravens that none of this mattered. None of this meant turning himself in to his father. He would rather die here than be tortured by his father. “I need more,” he demanded, wanting to see what they’d offer, even though he knew that at his first opportunity in the Foxes’ territory, he’d leave. 

Kevin didn’t hesitate with his bargain: “You can stay with the Foxes.”

Neil stopped walking, and so did his captors. Even Andrew seemed a little startled by Kevin’s offering. He was looking at Kevin with vague surprise on his face.

“What?” Neil asked.

“After you kill Riko, we’ll let you stay with us,” Kevin explained. “We won’t be heading north until after winter is over, anyways, but after it’s done, we’ll let you stay.”

“Oh, will we?” Andrew asked. Kevin turned to look at Andrew, and Neil thought about making a run for it. He didn’t.

“We have no other choice,” Kevin told Andrew.

For a moment, Neil thought Andrew might hit Kevin with his bat. He was standing still, like a predator about to strike, and his eyes didn’t blink. Neil held his breath. After a minute of silence, Andrew laughed, shaking his head, before turning to face Neil.

“Let’s go, then, little rabbit. Looks like you’re our only hope.”

“My name is Neil.”

“Oh, is it?” Andrew grinned. “Let’s go then, little rabbit. You’re our only Neil.”

*

They arrived at Fox territory well into the night. Kevin was swaying on his feet, and Andrew didn’t look amused anymore. Andrew had started babbling the last few hours of their hike, but soon his ramblings dwindled and simmered and stopped altogether, and the only sounds shared between them were the crunch of their boots beneath their feet as they neared the Fox territory.

As soon as they reached the ragtag camp of dilapidated buildings, tents, tarps, and wood, Kevin was following Andrew and Andrew was leading Neil to a dark and rundown shed with iron bars as the door. Andrew swung open the bars and pushed Neil in.

“I thought you were trying to convince me to want to work for you,” Neil grumbled, wishing they had untied his hands. Andrew was already closing and locking the bars of the shed.

Andrew, unsmiling, toneless, said, “We are. Isn’t this about the size of your shack?” Andrew shook the bars, taunting, and said, “Just like home.”

“We’ll be back tomorrow with Wymack,” Kevin said, his voice slurring over the words. Some ring leader, Neil thought. Neil continued to glare at Andrew, who hadn’t let go of the bars. 

“Great. Can’t wait.” Neil was already trying to figure out what he had that could pick the lock.

Andrew didn’t turn away from Neil as Kevin walked away. They stared at each other until Kevin’s footsteps faded and the only sounds left were the breaths between them and the hum of crickets and beetles, of breeze over the land, of nothing and no one but them.

“What?” Neil whispered once Andrew’s apathy was too much. “No more smiles for your old pal Neil?”

“The drugs are all gone, I’m afraid,” Andrew whispered back. He stared at Neil in silence for a little longer, until Neil started glaring, opening his mouth to snap, when Andrew finally said, “I wouldn’t leave if I were you.”

“Why? Would you miss me?”

“No. I’d tell your father.”

Neil, through Herculean effort, worked to keep his face blank, his body still. This man didn’t know Neil’s father. He didn’t. “Aw, you’re gonna tell on me?” Neil asked, mocking, impressed his voice didn’t shake.

“If you don’t do this for us,” Andrew went on, “I will tell your father where you are.”

“You don’t know me or my father.”

“Sure, Junior,” Andrew drawled, and Neil recoiled from the nickname, his stomach bottoming out. “I didn’t spend months trying to track you down without finding out a little something about you.”

Neil’s breath was coming fast in his lungs now. He straightened, rushed the bars, hoping to scare Andrew, but Andrew just watched Neil with dead eyes, unamused, unimpressed. “Does Kevin know?” Neil asked, wondering why they waited to bring his father up until now.

Andrew shook his head. “Kevin is an idiot. He really does think you can get in and out and live the rest of your pathetic little life as a Fox. But you and I, we know, don’t we, Neil? We know you won’t be coming back at all.”

Neil couldn’t breathe. He tried to gasp around the tightness in his chest, tried to get control of himself, but he couldn’t, just couldn’t— “So why do this?” Neil asked. “Why condemn me? Why me?”

“Because you are nothing and no one to me,” Andrew said, not shying away from Neil’s panicked gaze, not flinching, not caring at all. “Why wouldn’t I use you for this?”

And Neil didn’t know what to say, couldn’t argue with that, had no way to fight, so he let the strength leave his legs and he collapsed to the ground and felt his lips turn numb and finally noticed how cold the night was when he wasn’t moving and wasn’t angry and was just tired, so tired. “And what’s to stop me from just walking away from here?” Neil asked, but not with any real threat. “Besides the threat of my father? Since apparently he’ll be getting me either way.”

Andrew said, “Stay the winter with us. You’re not going to survive the season in that little shack. If you stay here and do as you’re told, you’ll get one last winter before you’re dead and gone. I’ll even make sure you don’t die before then.”

“And that’s it? That’s all you have to say?” The final words of a man condemning him to death, and Andrew didn’t look like he cared. Neil would have been impressed if he wasn’t so mad. 

“That’s all there is to say.” Andrew finally let go of the bars and kicked some dirt at Neil, just because. As soon as Neil had spit the dirt that landed in his mouth at Andrew’s feet, Andrew tapped two fingers to his temple in a mocking salute and said, “Welcome to the Foxhole Court,” before twirling a ring of keys around his finger and sauntering away.

Neil waited until he couldn’t hear Andrew’s footsteps anymore before curling into a ball and staring into the darkness around him. He could have tried to pick the lock, could have fought harder, raged harder, maybe appealed to Andrew’s sympathy more.

But Neil knew. If he left, his father would know where he was, and Neil would die alone. If he stayed, his father wouldn’t know where he was, and Neil would die alone, but maybe just a little later. Maybe with a few months in his life where he was warm and surrounded by people. He had stopped taking smuggling jobs, stopped interacting with other people, because he didn’t want his father to find him, but he really was nothing and no one. When Kevin had knocked on his door that night, he had startled Neil out of a slumber he hadn’t realized he had fallen into, and it had taken him a long time to wake up, having not eaten for days nor known how long it had been since he fell asleep. He hadn’t opened his door because he was waiting for whoever had found him to come in and kill him, and when no move was made, Neil was going to try to run away.

He could die here as well as he could at the hands of his father, the hands of starvation and dehydration, the hands of Andrew. It didn’t really matter. Neil was at the end of his rope.

It was just as Andrew had said. There really wasn’t anything else to say. Neil started writing his name in the dirt in front of his face,  _ Neil, Neil _ , over and over again. He whispered, “Welcome home, Neil,” into the quiet night and traced his name until his finger was numb, until he fell asleep.


	2. lost all my money but a two dollar bill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi i just wanna thank everyone for being here again the next chapter really tore me up and im so excited to share it but i have to share this one first lmao see u tomorrow

Someone kicked the bars of Neil’s holding cell, jolting him awake. When he looked up, he found three men staring down at him: Kevin, Andrew, and a large man with big arms and a grizzled face. Kevin was scowling, and the big man was glaring, and Andrew was grinning. Drugged again.

“You’re him, then?” the big man gruffed.

Neil slowly sat up. The fabric that he normally kept around his face to protect from the ever present dust of the apocalypse and to add to his smuggler aura had slipped off his face in the night, so all three men could see his face, which, for some reason, delighted Andrew. The manic man hadn’t stopped studying Neil’s hair or eyes or lips the moment they woke Neil up.

“And you’re you, then?” Neil parried. What the fuck was he even doing here? He really should take his chances running away. How would Andrew even get word to his father? This was all so stupid. He was so stupid.

“This is Wymack,” Kevin told Neil.

“You might know him by his other names,” Andrew chirped suddenly, still staring straight into Neil’s eyes with his drugged intensity. “Wheremack, Whenmack, Whatmack, or, the seldom used but often thought, Bigmack.”

“Andrew, shut the fuck up,” Wymack said, and Andrew laughed. “What are you doing here, anyways? Shouldn’t you be out with Renee?”

“Renee doesn’t need my help to raid a few houses.”

“We leave in pairs.”

“I’m in a pair with Kevin right now.”

“Am I blind or are there three of us here when there should be two.”

“Coach!” Andrew said, a hand flying to his chest. “You dismiss our guest already?”

“Minyard, get the fuck out of here before I wring your sorry neck.”

“No part of my body has been sorry about anything a day in its life.”

Wymack sighed heavily, and even Kevin broke to pinch the bridge of his nose, and Andrew looked to Neil one last time. Neil, tired, amused, annoyed, returned Andrew’s too large smile with a small smirk of his own, and Andrew’s expression dimmed for point-two seconds before he abruptly turned and walked away, whistling a stupid tune and stuffing his hands in his pockets. 

“Jesus Christ,” Wymack muttered, and then turned back to Neil. “So, they say your name is Neil.”

“Yes.”

“And that you’ve agreed to help us.”

Neil frowned. “Is that what I did?”

“Look, kid, I know that Andrew is a little heavy handed with security, but you’re not here against your will. I just want to ask you a few questions, clarify some things, and then you’re free to be one of us.”

Neil remained silent. He could tell that Wymack believed what he said, but based off the tense set of Kevin’s shoulders and Andrew’s unwillingness to leave until forced proved to Neil that Kevin was planning on using Neil no matter what, and Andrew was planning on Neil’s death no matter what. So it didn’t really matter what Wymack said right now.

“You know what you have to do?” Wymack asked.

“Break into the Raven’s Nest and kill one of its leaders.”

“And you know why?”

“No.”

“No?” Wymack turned to Kevin. “What did you tell him?”

Kevin rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. “I mean, do we really need to give a reason for wanting Riko Moriyama dead?”

“If he’s risking his life for us, yes?” Wymack sighed again, turning back to Neil. He gave Neil some convoluted story about how Kevin used to be a part of the Ravens until they started to grow too ruthless, doing things Kevin didn’t want to be a part of, so he fled, and Riko, suffering from a traumatic brain injury he’d gotten at some point during the end of the world and unable to think rationally anymore, was hell-bent on retrieving Kevin and making him suffer.

“Kevin’s right,” Wymack said, wrapping up his story. “We don’t really need a reason to want Riko Moriyama dead, but I thought they would have been decent enough to give you one anyways before dragging you here and locking you up.”

“Decent,” Neil echoed. “Right.”

Wymack’s scowl turned more considering as he stared at Neil, who hadn’t sat up or said anything at all during the explanation. Wymack opened his mouth to ask a question that would probably incriminate Kevin and Andrew over their callous handling of Neil, but Neil was suddenly crushed by a wave of apathy at this whole situation. Before Wymack could say anything, Neil asked, “So when do I start? Kevin said something about a few months I’ll have to wait.”

Wymack wasn’t impressed by Neil’s diversion. He seemed about to say his piece anyways before he decided to play along. “No one would survive crossing the mountains in the dead of winter to get there. We don’t make a move until the snow’s gone.”

Neil nodded. He looked pointedly to the lock on the bars and asked, “Can I leave now? I’m hungry.”

*

Andrew studied Neil for three days before he decided he hated his fucking everything.

Neil stitched himself seamlessly into the frayed edges of the Foxhole Court, and Andrew saw him for the liar that he was. He played meek and unassuming, ignoring fights instigated by Seth or Andrew (but mostly Andrew). Matt, Dan, Renee, and Allison effortlessly folded him into their group when Neil deigned to not be alone (which wasn’t often), and Nicky, Aaron, and Kevin stayed away from him because Andrew told them to (not until Neil proved that he wouldn’t hurt any of them, not until he proved that he wouldn’t run away).

At night, Andrew would stand at the border of their territory and wait for Neil to run, to come and kill him, to do anything, but Neil never did. Andrew would pass the night in silence, smoking moldy cigarettes and wondering what the fuck was wrong with him that he focused too much attention on a flighty little shit who lied to everyone.

When he was drugged up and laughing, Andrew hated that Neil stopped wearing his smuggler’s cape around the camp, flaunting his dark red hair and piercing blue eyes, and he hated it even more when Wymack ordered Neil to go on perimeter sweeps with one of the other Foxes and he would cover himself up again.

When it was night and Andrew was himself again, he still hated Neil’s face.

The recent batch of medication Andrew used was diminishing, and he hoped that whatever they found for him next would help focus his thoughts, which spent just a little bit too much time watching Neil as he worked his way around the Foxes and their Court.

*

Neil thought it was weird that Andrew antagonized him all day, sought him out to push his buttons and make him mad, only to disappear completely as soon as the sun set, avoiding Neil, not speaking to him at all.

Not that Neil wanted to interact with a sober Andrew—he didn’t want to interact with any type of Andrew. It was just that most of the other Foxes were nice and welcoming and joked and teased, and Neil wasn’t sure how he was supposed to fit in with these people and bond with them when they all thought he’d be coming back from the Raven’s Nest and only Andrew knew he wouldn’t.

And Neil, as much of a liar as he was, found that he appreciated being around someone who knew the truth about him, about the world, about this cruel situation, even though it was Andrew who was forcing it upon him.

So Neil would lay awake at night and consider finding Andrew, remembering the only time he’d ever seen Andrew sober, his gaze penetrative but blank, threats on his lips, but a promise to protect until Neil died. He thought about Andrew’s strange circle of family, cautious smiles from Nicky and complete disregard from Aaron, Kevin’s constant frowns, yet none of them venturing to speak with Neil despite the other Foxes welcoming Neil so quickly. He thought about how the other Foxes tended to avoid Andrew’s circle, despite none of them doing anything threatening or scary, except for maybe Andrew’s innocuous and drugged threats to maim and murder whenever someone looked at him too long.

Neil didn’t know what he was supposed to do as the nights grew colder and the mattresses drew closer so the Foxes could share body heat with one another, yet Andrew never joined them, just spent his nights alone outside, and Neil wondered if maybe Andrew was waiting for Neil to do something, too.

*

By the time the first snow of the season fell, Neil was practically one of them. He went on perimeter sweeps with Matt, foraged for food with Allison, played games with the others when they grew too bored to care about life, slept in a large room of warm bodies almost piled on top of each other to keep out the chill. He searched for warm clothes in abandoned houses, planned his upcoming Riko assassination with Kevin, and discussed expanding the territory and recruitment with Wymack and the others.

Neil felt like he was playing at a real boy, and Andrew, whenever the drugged man decided to be around Neil, would laugh and tease and mock without words, with looks and winks and laughs, and Neil kept his mouth shut and tried to pretend what Andrew did and said didn’t matter, but one night after Andrew had mocked him for getting punched in the face after a spar with Matt, Neil decided it was time to talk to a sober Andrew, because clearly Andrew didn’t want to talk to Neil when he was sober and Neil was tired of his shit.

So on the night of the first snowfall, everything blanketed in a thin layer of frost and snow, Neil lay with the others and stared at the ceiling of the broken building they called their home and listened to their snores and their breaths until he slowly rose and slipped from his mattress and found Andrew sitting on one of their outposts.

Andrew wasn’t surveying the wasteland, though; he was staring at the Foxhole Court and watching Neil approach, a cigarette perched on his lips, unblinking, and Neil didn’t hesitate as he climbed the ladder and stood beside Andrew. Andrew remained sitting and continued to watch the Foxhole Court and Neil stared out at the wasteland. Neither said anything until a shiver racked Neil’s body and he couldn’t help but ask, “Aren’t you cold?”

Andrew didn’t turn to look up at Neil. Neil heard him blow out smoke before answering, “I don’t feel anything.”

Neil rolled his eyes. “Okay.”

Andrew sounded bored when he asked, “What are you doing out here?”

“I’m here to annoy you.”

“You always annoy me.”

Neil grinned but didn’t turn to face Andrew. “Ah, so you  _ do  _ feel something.”

After a pause where Neil’s grin grew wider, Andrew said, “Don’t forget I know who you are.”

“Don’t forget I’m a dead man walking. I don’t care about anything, either.”

“We have so much in common,” Andrew drawled, stubbing out the half of his cigarette left and placing it behind his ear.

Neil finally turned down to look at Andrew. Andrew was still staring out at nothing, seemingly bored with it all, barely acknowledging Neil’s presence, so Neil took this opportunity to study sober Andrew. He didn’t have any nervous ticks or blatantly obvious personality traits that warranted a pressing need for medication daily. Neil frowned, confused by the still man beside him, who seemed normal and fine, with maybe just a touch more apathy than what most people showed on their face.

He thought about asking about the drugs, but he didn’t know how much he wanted to care about a drugged Andrew versus a sober one. Neil was, after all, a dead man walking. He really didn’t have time to care about things like this. 

He asked instead, “Why don’t you sleep with the others?”

“Why do you?” Andrew parried. “Feel safe with them already?”

Neil never really felt safe with anyone, but it was nice to have a mattress and to be surrounded by body heat. “I feel warm with them already, and I’m not an idiot.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“I’m not the one with blue lips.”

Andrew cocked his head. “Spend a lot of time staring at my lips, do you?”

Neil, still watching Andrew’s profile, said, “Only about as much time as you spend staring at mine.”

Andrew’s hand, which had been reaching toward a bottle of alcohol Neil just noticed at his side, stilled suddenly. Neil grinned again.

Neil said, “You know, I knew it would be fun to annoy you, but I didn’t think it would be  _ this  _ fun.”

Andrew finally moved to uncap his booze and swallowed a big drink. He didn’t set the bottle down again, instead cradling it to his chest. He said, “And you had to wait until tonight to do it?”

“Why would I talk to you during the day?” Neil asked rhetorically. “You’re not even you.”

“And you would know?”

Neil shrugged, finally turning away from Andrew. He stared instead at the moon, half full and tinted green in the strange light of the winter night, dust in the air, chill in his bones. He told Andrew, “I prefer this to whatever the fuck else you are.”

After a slight pause where Neil heard Andrew take another drink, Andrew said, “I’m not anything else.”

Neil thought this was probably the realest conversation they’d had with each other, even if it wasn’t of any substance, even if it was about absolutely nothing. And Neil thought he preferred this to everything else that had happened to him so far at the Foxhole Court: the hesitant friendships, the warm bed, the place to call home, even only for a moment.

Neil said softly, “Not right now, you aren’t.”

*

After speaking to a sober Andrew for an extended period of time, Neil decided that he only wanted to talk to that Andrew. So most every night now, once the others had fallen asleep and the night was too still to stand, Neil would slip from his bed and look for Andrew and find him in a different spot each night.

“You’d think you were trying to avoid me,” Neil said after the third night of hunting down Andrew and eventually finding him in the holding cell Neil had slept in the first night. He plopped beside Andrew in the dirt at a respectable distance, though it was frigid tonight and he wanted to be back in bed. Instead, he wrapped his arms around his bent knees and rested his chin on his arms and stared at Andrew while Andrew pretended Neil wasn’t there. 

“You’d think,” Andrew replied, and Neil scratched his lips with a thumb to hide his smile.

Another night and Neil found Andrew under the stairs in one of the buildings the Foxes used for food storage. He was eating from a sad can of beans that Neil immediately stole and started eating from with the tips of his fingers, and the look of disgust that passed Andrew’s face for a second was enough that Neil didn’t flinch when the cold goop of beans hit his tongue.

“I can’t stand you,” Andrew told him, and Neil slurped another handful of beans in silence.

Another night when it was snowing in heavy tufts and swirls and Neil found Andrew crouching behind the barricade in one of their outposts, the one farthest from the Foxhole Court’s sleeping area, and Neil dropped a blanket at Andrew’s feet and stood in front of his body for a moment before Andrew kicked his shin hard enough that he hissed and crouched to be level with Andrew.

“I don’t need your charity,” Andrew said, and Neil shrugged, running a finger over the blanket that Andrew hadn’t unfurled.

“Fine, but if you don’t put it on, I’m going to wrap it around my shoulders and put my arm around you.”

“If you touch me, I will kill you.”

Neil turned away from the blanket, startled at the intensity of Andrew’s voice. He usually didn’t show that much emotion when he wasn’t on his medication.

After a beat where Andrew waited for Neil to do something, Neil nodded, rocking back on his haunches and looking out into the storm. “Okay,” he said. He could feel Andrew staring at him, waiting, probably, to see if Neil would touch him out of spite, but Neil just continued rocking back until he was flat on his ass, and then laid on his back, and closed his eyes to the storm, fingers interlocked on his stomach, and tried not to smile when he heard Andrew move toward the blanket.

*

There came a weird day where Neil found Kevin and Andrew talking off to the side, and Kevin was frowning and Andrew was grinning and he heard Andrew say, “Ah, boo for you, Day, huh? But don’t worry; maybe this next haul will make me useful?” When Kevin scowled harder, Andrew laughed harder before turning to walk away. That’s when he spotted Neil, and his expression brightened. Neil, after weeks of spending time with Andrew at night, felt sick at the sight of his smile.

“What are you talking about?” Neil asked.

Andrew walked up to Neil and started straightening the fabric wrapped around Neil’s neck. He unfurled it, and then wrapped it the opposite way, and then rewound it around Neil’s face, and then stretched it over his mouth and through his teeth like a gag, and then under his chin and over his head like Neil had a toothache that needed to be held tight. When Andrew finally flopped the fabric over Neil’s face and Neil had still done nothing to stop him, Andrew finally dropped his arms and sighed in exasperation.

“You’re no fun,” he lamented, and Neil didn’t bother removing the fabric from his face.

He asked again, “What are you talking about?”

“Your lack of entertainment.”

“Andrew.”

“Neil.”

“What is this ‘haul’ you’re talking about?” The fabric finally fell from his face, and he was able to see Andrew’s unhinged expression five inches from his own face. Neil was frowning, and Andrew was delighted at his displeasure.

“I’m surprised they haven’t told you already, what with how nosy you are.” Andrew brought up a finger and booped Neil’s nose once with an exaggerated, slow motion. Neil scoffed and batted his hand away.

“What are you talking about?” he asked again, annoyed.

“What are  _ you  _ talking about?”

Neil took a deep breath. “ _ Andrew _ .”

“Ooo, I love when you say my name like that.”

“Like I’m about to kill you?”

“Is that a promise?”

Neil closed his eyes. Took another deep breath. Felt Andrew boop his nose again, and when Neil opened his eyes, he was furious.

“Are you going to hit me?” Andrew asked, grinning.

“I’m not going to touch you,” Neil said, glaring and clenching his fists at his side. He just wanted to know what the  _ fuck _ —

Andrew’s face suddenly clouded over, for just a moment, and a second later his grin returned, wider this time. “Oh, Neil. As entertaining as he is unreal.”

“I thought you said I wasn’t fun.”

“I say a lot of things.”

“Except for the one thing I’m asking.”

“Boo for you, huh, Junior?” Neil flinched, and Andrew leaned in a little, staring at Neil’s lips. “Ooo, I love when you look at me like that.”

“Like I’m about to kill you?” Neil asked through clenched teeth. He knew what Andrew was doing; Neil knew he was being played so he’d stop asking questions, and he knew all he needed to do was ignore Andrew’s taunts, but he couldn’t this time.

“Like you’re about to run away,” Andrew whispered, still staring at Neil’s lips. “Won’t you leave now, Neil? I can’t take much more of you.”

“You made me be here.”

“Ah, did I?” Andrew tsked at himself. “Maybe I’m hoping you’ll disappear with the drugs.”

“What?”

“You know, Neil, like a side effect?”

“What are you talking about?” 

Andrew sighed, shaking his head. “You’re like a broken record. Nothing interesting to say.”

“Why do you want me to be interesting?”

“I don’t.”

“Could have fooled me.”

Andrew shook his head in regret one last time before checking Neil’s shoulder with his own and walking away. Neil did not watch him leave.

*

Neil didn’t talk to anyone the rest of the day, but he noticed that Renee and Allison had disappeared and the Foxes were somber at their departure, and when they returned, Kevin, Andrew, and Wymack disappeared with them into another part of the Foxhole Court and no one spoke to anyone for the rest of the night. Neil did not seek out Andrew at nightfall, still annoyed at their earlier conversation. He felt nauseous and waiting and unable to explain why, but he knew that whatever he woke up to tomorrow, it was not going to be good.

*

When Neil went in search of something to eat the next morning, he found Andrew sitting on a box of ramen noodles. He was fiddling with a knife that Neil knew he kept in his armbands, and he wasn’t smiling or buzzing with constant energy. In fact, he seemed sluggish, taking just a second too long to do anything: twirl his knife, shift his leg, look up at Neil when Neil said his name.

“Ah,” Andrew said, and his voice was thick and slurred. “The man of the season.”

“What?”

“Here to see how I’m doing, I presume?” Andrew drawled, and Neil frowned at this drunken state he seemed to be in, though Neil couldn’t smell any booze or see any empty bottles. “Just like the rest of them.”

“I’m here to get some food. What are you talking about?”

“The same thing I always talk about.”

“So, nothing?”

Andrew’s smile this time was slow and dragging across his face, his eyes hooded and glazed. Neil noticed now that Andrew’s skin looked a little gray, and his lips were bloodless and chapped. “What is wrong with you?” Neil asked.

Andrew’s knife slipped in his hand, and the blade sliced the tips of his fingers. Both Neil and Andrew watched tiny splotches of blood bloom on three of his fingers. “Oops,” Andrew said. “Kevin won’t like that.”

“What does it matter what Kevin likes?” Neil bent down to retrieve the knife and Andrew continued to stare at the blood welling on his fingers. The slice wasn’t deep or long enough for the blood to flow for long; it was already clotting. After staring in wonder for a few seconds longer, Andrew shoved his fingers in his mouth and turned to look up at Neil. “What is wrong with you?” Neil asked again, more worried now than annoyed.

“Kevin demands protection, see?” Andrew said around his fingers. “And I won’t be free of him until Riko is gone. And Riko won’t be gone until you’re gone. Then all my problems will be solved.”

“I didn’t know I was one of your problems,” Neil said. He wanted to take Andrew’s fingers out of his mouth—he thought this look on Andrew was worse than the weeks of mania he had been before—but Neil wasn’t going to touch Andrew when he knew he didn’t like to be touched. Neil crossed his arms, and Andrew, a second too late, tracked the movement with his gaze. He started swaying a little, like he was dizzy, and Neil started to feel sick.

“You’re my biggest problem,” Andrew said, and then dropped the fingers from his mouth. They were slick with saliva, and Neil offered the fabric wound around his neck as a towel. Andrew took it, tugged Neil closer, didn’t say another word, couldn’t focus on anything. He didn’t even dry his fingers—just held onto Neil and flitted his glazed eyes across all the features on Neil’s face.

“Did you get new drugs?” Neil asked, his voice quiet.

Andrew, still cataloging Neil’s face, scrambled with his free hand into his pockets until Neil heard the unmistakable sound of pills rattling inside a plastic bottle. Neil’s breath came slow with the sudden fear and apprehension rising in his chest. He knew, even before Andrew fumbled the bottle into Neil’s open palm, that he absolutely did not want to see whatever Andrew just gave him.

He looked down and studied the bottle’s label while Andrew tugged on his makeshift scarf and pulled Neil closer. He felt Andrew start to drag his fingers through Neil’s hair, tugging and curling the strands and humming as if in wonder, and Neil didn’t stop him as he tried to make sense of the words he was reading. Neil had never understood medicine, even before all this, so the type of prescription didn’t make sense to him, nor the amount of pills or the size of the capsules. The only thing that did make sense was the expiration date on the bottle, dated three years ago, and now the thing stopping the air in his lungs was rage.

“Andrew,” he said. “Why are you taking expired medication?”

Andrew's hands, both caressing Neil’s hair now, moved down to Neil’s face and cupped his cheeks. He pushed his thumbs into Neil’s nostrils, and Neil opened his mouth to breathe. Eventually, Andrew changed the position of his hands so that his left index finger was tracing Neil’s eyebrows, the shape of his nose, his lips, his Adam’s apple. Andrew’s right hand was fiddling with Neil’s left ear, curling hair behind it, tugging on his earlobe, giving him a dry nelson.

Neil waited for an answer, and finally, when Andrew’s hands wrapped around Neil’s throat, Andrew said, “That’s all that’s left.”

Neil curled his fist around the bottle of pills so hard he heard the plastic creak. He studied Andrew’s expression one last time before he stepped out of his hands, ready to march back to where the others were already eating, oddly quiet. Andrew’s hands fell at his side and his lips curled into another awkward smile.

“Hey,” Andrew called after Neil walked away, but Neil didn’t turn around. “My knife!”

*

Neil tossed the bottle of pills in front of the Foxes (sans Wymack, who was probably with Andrew now), and none of them looked surprised at the sight of it. They responded more to the anger they saw in Neil’s face.

“You okay, man?” Matt asked.

Neil ignored him, ignored all of them as he surveyed their faces and tried to decide who would best answer his question. He eventually settled on Dan.

“Why is Andrew taking expired medication?” he asked, and he hoped his tone was stern enough to offer no deflections, no arguments, to demand nothing but the truth.

Based off the paling of everyone’s faces, he had succeeded.


	3. homesick and lonesome and i’m feeling kind of blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just like to turn things around sometimes. let me know what u think. sometimes (like yesterday) im like "wow love what i've done here" today im like "is this garbage? can't tell" lmao
> 
> tw for withdrawal

“Neil—”

“Just answer the question.”

“It’s not that simple—”

“I’m not asking for simple. I’m just asking for anything. Tell me why he’s taking these expired pills.”

“You took his pills from him?”

“He gave them to me.”

“He gave you his pills?”

“Answer my fucking question, Dan.”

“Okay, look, it was a long time ago. None of us were part of the original Foxes yet. Like, literally none of us. They weren’t a good group, if you remember the rumors.”

“I don’t.”

“Okay. Um. Well, they weren’t nice. Not until Wymack took over. And, apparently before Andrew had even joined, there were these people who attacked Nicky. Like, hardcore attacked him, and Andrew just…well, he killed them.”

“Okay? So?”

“So this was back when Andrew was trying to get the Foxes to accept Nicky and Aaron and him. And after he killed those people, the Foxes said that Andrew was too volatile to be a part of the group, but Andrew really wanted Nicky and Aaron to be a part of it, I think, so he struck a deal with them.”

“What deal?”

“Well, the old Foxes said they’d only feel safe around Andrew if he took something to calm his moods.”

“ _ Calm his moods _ ? Andrew has literally one mood and it’s nothing.”

“Maybe he was different back then.”

“I fucking doubt it.”

“Um. Okay.”

“So they made him take medication to calm him down, and Andrew agreed so Nicky and Aaron could stay with the Foxes?”

“Yeah. I guess the old Foxes would go out and find, like, downer pills or something for Andrew to take so that he wouldn’t go on rampages around their camp.”

“ _ Rampages _ ?

“Neil—”

“If all the old Foxes are gone, why is he still taking the pills?”

“He’s been taking them for a long time, Neil. His body is used to having something in his system. If he stops taking his pills, he goes through withdrawal.”

“So? Make him go through withdrawal.”

“Look, Neil, I know you care about Andrew, but you haven’t been here that long. You don’t know what he’s like when he isn’t on his pills.”

“Literally, I do. He doesn’t take his pills to go to sleep, and I sit with him every night.”

“Well, that’s really cute, but he usually masks his withdrawal symptoms with alcohol. If he doesn’t take his pills, he goes through his stages, and the last one is ‘give me my fucking pills or I’ll kill you.’”

“Okay, and? I do not understand how you can let him keep taking expired medication. It’s going to kill him.”

“And he might kill  _ us _ if we make him stop.”

“And you’re all okay with this? You’re all okay with letting him slowly destroy his liver and mind by taking these pills because you’re scared? Nicky, he’s your cousin. He did this for you. And Aaron, what the actual fuck? Weren’t you training to be a doctor?”

“That was a long time ago.”

“And no one can stop Andrew—”

“You all could stop Andrew. You all could stop him right now by taking his pills away and stop enabling him.”

“Neil—”

“You know what? Never mind. It’s fine. This is fine. I’ll take care of it.”

*

For the rest of the day, Neil foraged for supplies around camp. He avoided any Fox that tried to speak to him and went around collecting food, blankets, and water, all while ignoring the rattle of pills from deep inside his pocket. Then he went around the abandoned buildings in the territory until he found a structure with a room in it that had no windows and one solid steel door that only took a little finagling to secure back in its hinges. He took multiple trips to unload all his supplies, and at one point, while he had been lugging a pile of blankets, Matt asked hesitantly, “Are you not sleeping with us anymore?”

And Neil said, “These aren’t for me.”

*

It was well into the evening when Andrew finally came for him, just like Neil knew he would.

He still had his pills, after all.

Neil was sitting against the wall beside the door of the room he’d just filled, and at Andrew’s approach, he stood up. He took one steeling breath for what he was about to do, and then he met Andrew’s gaze and waited.

Andrew seemed to be waiting, too. After a minute, he pulled out his other knife from his armband, and Neil tried not to look too relieved. He thought he was going to have to fight Andrew for it, and he didn’t know how to resolve himself to do that. Andrew just made it easy for him.

“Oh, Neil,” Andrew eventually drawled. “What do you think you are doing?”

“What needs to be done.”

“And what is that? The others tell me you really let them have it. All over little ol’ me.”

Neil didn’t say anything. He waited for Andrew to take a step closer, and when he didn’t, Neil swallowed against the nausea building in his throat and took out the bottle of pills. Andrew’s focus snapped to the bottle, and Neil, though victorious, hated himself. Andrew took a step closer, changing the grip on his knife into something more lethal.

“You remember who I am?” Neil whispered, not taking his eyes away from Andrew’s. He wasn’t afraid of the knife. He wasn’t afraid of Andrew.

Andrew grinned. “How could I forget?” And then he lunged, and Neil’s training from forgotten years gone past came back. It wasn’t hard, even though Andrew was so much bigger and much more deadly, but Andrew was also weak with withdrawal, and Neil was desperate, so he was able to twist and turn and slip the knife from Andrew’s grasp with only a graze to one of his cheeks. He felt the blood slide down his face like tears, but he didn’t pause to wipe it away before forcing Andrew through the doorway and slamming the door behind him.

Neil was breathing heavily, and he couldn’t hear what Andrew was doing on the other side of the thick steel door. But after a minute, he heard Andrew ask, “And what’s this, Neil?”

In response, Neil dumped the pills on the ground, letting them clatter loudly on the cracked tile, before stepping on them, crunching them to dust.

“I’ll let you out when you can learn how to behave,” Neil said, and then he sat down on the other side of the door. He knew that there wasn’t an outside lock on the door and didn’t know exactly how he was going to handle that, but he figured he could cross that bridge when he came to it.

Instead, he settled his head against the solid door and closed his eyes.

Andrew started laughing.

*

It didn’t take long for Andrew to start purging. Neil had tried to find as many empty containers as he could for Andrew to use since the room he was locked in was only four walls and nothing else, and he didn’t know how long Andrew’s withdrawal would last. He hoped the containers would be enough.

“Uh oh, Neil, looks like we’re really in it out,” Andrew said after a violent bout of vomiting.

“You’ll be fine.”

Andrew laughed. After another round of puking, he said, “You took my knives away.”

“I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Another fit of laughter.

“What are you going to do, Junior? Stay outside until I’m all better?”

“Yes.”

“What if they need you? What if you need to leave?”

“I don’t need to leave.”

“Liar.”

For the rest of the night, Andrew was silent save for the involuntary sounds he made while his body suffered through its first night with nothing in it.

*

Andrew’s body fluctuated between fits of desperate strength where he told himself he could fight Neil and get out, followed by bouts of violent shaking where he curled into a ball and knew that he didn’t even have enough in him to open the door.

Mostly he avoided the food and water, hoping to die, but after a few hours of vomiting nothing but bile and his throat screamed raw, Andrew ate some food just so he’d have something for his body to expel.

When he wasn’t delirious or shaking or aching, he was taunting Neil, trying to get him to leave, to open the door, to make it stop.

_ I’ll tell him now, Neil. I’ll tell your father now where you are.  
_ Okay, Andrew.

_ Everyone knows about the Butcher and how much he wants to kill his son.  
_ Yeah.

_ Maybe I’ll save him the trouble and kill you myself.  
_ Then you’d miss out on him torturing me to death.  
_ It’s what you deserve.  
_ Sure.

_ Some said your name is Nathaniel _ .  
It used to be.  
_ Too much like Daddy?  
_ Yeah. I just want to be me.  
_ You won’t be for much longer _ .  
No, I guess not.

_ Why are you doing this. You’ll be dead in two months.  
_ True.

_ I hate you _ .  
Cool.

_ I hate you _ .  
Yeah.

_ I hate you.  
_ I know.

*

Eventually, Andrew started sleeping. Sometimes he’d wake up and hear voices outside—always Neil’s, always there, but sometimes he heard Renee, or Aaron, or Kevin, or Wymack.

He’d close his eyes and fall under again to the drawl of Neil’s voice, so quiet he couldn’t hear the words. He’d scoot closer to the door, and closer to the door, until his back rested against it and he sighed and Neil would stop talking and then Andrew would sleep and sleep.

One time he woke up and Neil was talking about his life, saying things like, “Even before all this, he was looking for me” and “My mother took me away after he tried to sell me to the Moriyamas” and “We were on the run when it happened” and “Not much is really different for me, I guess.”

At one point, when Andrew couldn’t feel anything anymore—not tired, not hungry, not sick—he stared at the space between the bottom of the door and the floor, at the shadow of Neil’s body pressed against it, and listened as Neil said, “It’s been nice here, though. Nice to be around people again. I was dead when you found me, you know. If you hadn’t knocked, I wouldn’t have woken up.”

Andrew pushed his fingers under the space between the door and the floor, but the gap wasn’t big enough and he couldn’t make them fit. His skin peeled away as he forced them through anyways, but eventually they wouldn’t go any farther, even with all the blood, so Andrew left them there, crammed under the door, and closed his eyes, listening to Neil talk about his smuggler jobs, about his close calls, about his mother's death, about his life, about his life, about his life.

*

It took a week, but finally Andrew opened the door. Neil, who had been lying sprawled in front of the door and catnapping, jolted up.

Immediately the smell from the withdrawal room permeated the hallway, and Neil wrinkled his nose.

So did Andrew.

Andrew looked like he lost ten pounds and hadn’t slept in ten days, and even though his skin was pale it wasn’t gray, and even though his lips were chapped they weren’t bloodless, and even though his eyes were hooded they were clear and seeing and staring straight at Neil.

Neil smiled, and Andrew turned to walk down the hallway and out of the building.

“I’m not cleaning this up!” Neil called after him, and Andrew flipped Neil off as he continued to walk away.

*

Neil had fully expected Andrew to never speak to him again.

Which was fine, he told himself, because Neil just wanted Andrew to stop taking the drugs, and Neil only had a few more months until he would be dead, anyways, so it’s not like he had time to care about anything anymore.

The first night after the purging, Neil had decided to push his luck and find Andrew again that night, just to see what he’d do. Andrew had been haunting the Foxhole Court all day, not saying anything to anyone but not avoiding them, either. He ate with the others, sat with his family when they weren’t doing anything, scanned the perimeter with Renee, acknowledged Wymack when Wymack acknowledged him.

Everyone walked around Andrew like he was a loaded gun, shooting him nervous glances and flinching when he moved too fast. Only Neil, Wymack, and Renee didn’t panic at every movement, and when the sun set, only Neil was the one to seek out Andrew when the others went to sleep.

He eventually found Andrew sitting in the middle of an open field, legs sprawled in front of him and leaning back on his arms while he stared at the sky.

Neil walked up to him but didn’t sit beside him. He stood behind him instead, staring down while Andrew stared up. Eventually, he pulled Andrew’s two knives out of his boot and dropped them beside him. Andrew turned to look at the knives but didn’t move to grab them.

“They look sharpened,” Andrew said.

Neil, filled with a surge of relief, smiled. “They are.”

“Why.”

“This scratch on my face is abysmal and, frankly, embarrassing.”

“Big words from the Butcher’s son.”

“I have a legacy to uphold.”

“I hope that when he kills you, he makes it hurt.”

“He most definitely will.”

A lull, where Andrew had nothing to say and neither did Neil. A cold winter breeze floated by, scented with the promise of snow and ice. Neil, his nose running from the cold, sniffed once, and cleared his throat, and turned to leave.

“Goodnight, Andrew,” he said, because he could be done with this now, even though he didn’t want to be, but being out here with Andrew was actually starting to hurt, so he would leave and go to bed and wake up and he would do that every day until he died, but then he heard Andrew stand up behind him and together they walked back to the other sleeping Foxes.

*

The winter days started blurring together.

The mornings were cold and full of snow and the nights were cold and full of ice, and he laughed with the others when someone slipped, and he warmed up with the others when Wymack made them all a big pot of soup, and he lounged with the others when they were too lazy to do anything else, and he gossiped with Allison, and laughed with Dan and Matt, and argued with Kevin, and listened to Nicky and Wymack, and ignored Aaron and Seth, and avoided Renee, and sat with Andrew late at night until they couldn’t feel their fingers so they would return home and slip under the covers, mattresses beside each other, and Neil would stare at Andrew’s face until he fell asleep, belly full of food, skin flush with warmth, and wonder when the last snow would fall.

*

When the days started getting longer and the stretches between snow falls were more frequent than the snow, Neil started asking Kevin about the plan.

“I assume I won’t be going through the mountains by myself.”

Kevin snorted. “Yes, though I doubt we have to fear you running away now.”

“Once a runner, always a runner,” Andrew said, but Neil just rolled his eyes and stayed silent. He didn’t bother to tell them that he probably wouldn’t run away now, even if they did send him through the mountains by himself. He’d do this for them because he’d been living with their fear for months now, and he found that he did want to relieve that from their shoulders, with or without the threat of his father.

And Neil was tired of living with the fear inside himself.

“It’d be better if we had a car,” Kevin explained, “but we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves, and we don’t have a lot of gas left. It’s only used for emergencies.”

Neil raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I didn’t even know you had a car.”

Kevin rolled his eyes and looked to Andrew. “Yeah, we’ve got a car. Some people couldn’t let theirs go when the world ended.”

Neil turned to Andrew, who was studiously uninterested, and he grinned. Andrew, though he wasn’t looking at either of them, frowned at their attention.

“Ah,” Neil said, and Andrew directed his glare to rest solely on Neil. “Ah,” Neil said again. “I thought it was food, but I suppose that sometimes, the quickest way to a man’s heart is through his car.”

Andrew slipped a knife out of his armband and tapped it gently on Neil’s chest. “Or through his chest,” he said, and Neil, for the first time in a long time, laughed.


	4. it’s dark and a-raining and I’ve got to go home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for your kindness, and just remember that neil still has to go home

The first time that it rained instead of snowed, Andrew shook Neil awake and walked them outside and they sat in one of the outposts and watched the sun rise behind the storm clouds, washing the world in gray and sleet. In the dewy hours of the morning, when the rain eventually petered out and Neil’s clothes were plastered and cracking with ice on his skin, Andrew opened Neil’s left hand and removed his glove and started drawing circles on his palm.

Neil shivered at the touch, shivered at the cold, shivered at the warmth, and whispered, “What are you doing?”

Andrew didn’t stop drawing circles, his touch becoming more purposeful, more lingering. He slipped a finger under the hem of Neil’s long sleeve and tapped a finger on the inside of Neil’s wrist, keeping time with his pulse. “Nothing,” Andrew said. He stopped tapping and started rubbing along the inside of Neil’s wrist.

“Hm,” Neil said, the only thing he could manage around his thick tongue and hot chest.

“Something you want to say, Neil?” Andrew asked, his voice low. He was looking at Neil now, and Andrew’s eyes were dark and everything felt very warm and very cold and Neil shook his head. “Are you sure?” he prodded, and his finger slid farther up Neil’s arm under his shirt, tracing a vein.

Neil swallowed. Thought about the last few weeks, and all that he had left to live for, and asked quietly, “Can I kiss you?”

“No,” Andrew said, leaning in and trailing his finger back down to Neil’s wrist, where he encircled it with his fingers. “But I can kiss you,” he whispered across Neil’s lips, and then waited until Neil nodded before leaning in.

*

Neil really liked kissing Andrew. He didn’t know why they had waited so long, why they weren’t doing this the whole time, how he ever thought he had been warm before when Andrew’s kisses felt so hot, when his hands burned Neil’s skin when they wriggled under his clothes and over his scars, when Andrew’s teeth seared his lips when he bit down and Andrew’s lips sucked on his neck and Andrew’s tongue licked sweat from behind Neil’s ear. 

Neil felt feverish and wanting, and he couldn’t stop kissing Andrew every night, or shivering under Andrew’s touch, or smiling softly when Andrew finally dragged Neil’s hands into his hair and said  _ just here _ .

Neil’s dreams stopped following his inevitable demise—he stopped thinking about his father, or the end of winter, or the end of it all, and only dreamt about Andrew, and the promise of the next sunrise, and the feel of a warm body over his, and the tickle of a strand of hair when he tucked a piece behind Andrew’s ear.

The snow was melting. The grass was greening. Neil did not have many days left.

But he did have tomorrow.

*

Kevin announced that it was almost time to go. The other Foxes protested, but only half-heartedly, knowing that this really was their best option for the fear of Riko Moriyama to be over. The Ravens were usually dormant during the winter, just like any of the raiders in this part of the world, unable to do much raiding when people died two feet into a winter storm, but the threat of spring made the threat of Riko more prominent.

It was almost time to go.

So Neil was only a little surprised when, as he and Andrew watched another sunset, Andrew suddenly said, “I want to figure something else out.”

And Neil almost asked what he meant, but the taste of Andrew was still thick on his tongue and he knew, so he said, “There’s nothing else to figure out. I’m the best person for this.”

“No.” Andrew’s tone was resolute. “You’re not the only person in the world.”

Neil smiled, and thought about the time weeks ago when he had walked away from Andrew because it was starting to hurt to be around him. Neil should have listened to himself better. He said, “No, but it helps that I have nothing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a suicide mission for anyone, Andrew. And I’m nothing, so it makes sense for it to be me. Nothing will be lost. Nothing will be gone.”

“Shut up. We’re finding someone else.”

“Andrew—”

“Stop.”

“Fine.” Neil didn’t continue to argue, but only because he knew he didn’t have to. There wasn’t another option, and now that Andrew was starting to push for someone else, Neil would have to leave sooner than planned. A shame, because he wanted to kiss Andrew one more time, but he always wanted to kiss Andrew one more time. 

When the sun was sinking below the horizon and Neil was starting to get cold, Andrew asked, “Who told you you were nothing?”

Neil smiled, staring out at the wasteland in front of them. “You did,” he said. 

*

That night, after Neil counted Andrew’s breaths until they evened out, Neil silently stood up and slipped away from the rest of the Foxes. He wished he could have said goodbye to them, wished he could have thanked them, given them any sort of excuse for why he had to leave now and alone and without a second thought, but he was just so tired and sad and scared, so he left them all behind without a look back before he was too weak to even do that.

*

Andrew woke to the sunrise and an empty bed beside him. 

He couldn’t make sense of the sight at first because he hadn’t been sleeping with the other Foxes for long and always woke up disoriented at first. But most mornings he woke to the sight of Neil blearily waking on the bed beside him and now Andrew was waking alone. 

He sat up. Looked around at the sleeping figures in beds around him, and said into the still quiet morning: “Neil’s gone.” He touched Neil’s mattress, his blankets—both long cold. “Neil’s gone,” he said again, a little louder. 

No one woke up.

*

Andrew walked around their territory once, twice. Again. There wasn’t anything of Neil’s anywhere because when they had taken Neil from his shack, they hadn’t allowed him to grab any possessions. Neil came into the Foxhole Court with nothing and apparently he’d left with it as well. 

The only indication that he’d been there at all was the empty bed Andrew woke up next to and the withdrawal room where Andrew had found Neil’s name scratched into the wall beside the door, on the floor in front of the door, and on the very bottom of the door, crude and barely legible but undoubtedly  _ neil neil neil.  _

*

“I can’t believe he left without us.”

“Maybe he decided to ditch and not kill Riko at all.”

“I have more faith in Neil than that.”

“Okay, but he disappeared like a thief in the night without telling anyone, and I gotta say that’s not looking good.”

“I just don’t understand why he didn’t tell anyone goodbye?”

“Or take anyone with him? I’m worried about him.”

“Why? It’s obvious he left because he knew he couldn’t do it.”

“I think he left because he knew he could and didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

“Well, that makes literally only one of us who thinks Neil’s that good of a person.”

“I think he’ll come through. You’ll see.”

*

Andrew was going to leave and Wymack and Kevin had to stop him. Andrew had packed a bag and stuffed it with guns and food and knives and he was going to walk until he found Neil and he was going to keep walking until he found him. 

Wymack stopped him at the gate and Kevin dragged him to the holding cell and threw him in when Andrew had lunged at him, hands wrapped around his neck, and once the door was locked Wymack asked  _ what the fuck, Andrew  _ and Andrew stormed the bars and tried to pry them apart, to make enough space for him to pull his body through, but he wasn’t strong enough. 

“What the fuck, Andrew,” Wymack asked again, and so Andrew told him. 

*

They left Andrew in the cell while the rest of the Foxes discussed what they could do, but everyone knew they were probably too late to find Neil now, and everyone was hoping that he really had run away, but when Andrew wasn’t let out of his cell and Kevin was pacing the camp and Wymack was aggressively stirring more soup, they knew. 

Neil had gone to do what was promised, and he was not going to come back. 

So they were undoubtedly very surprised when, hours later, people announced their presence and demanded entry into the camp and Andrew was released from his cell only to find a group of people and none of them Neil. 

“It was pandemonium,” one of the people was saying, a former slave at the raider camp, Jean Moreau, flanked by a doctor named Abby and a mental doctor named Betsy, more slaves freed. “As soon as Riko died”—Andrew stopped breathing—“all hell broke loose. Half of the Ravens started attacking the other half, and the Butcher’s people were missing, and this one guy just let us out and said that we should come south and look for the Foxes.”

“No one followed you?” Kevin asked. “None of the Ravens saw you leave?”

“We stole one of their cars and followed the highway out of the mountains. We were going too fast for them to follow.” 

Kevin sighed in relief, and Andrew, unsatisfied with it all, unimpressed with their plight, uncaring about how they got here, asked, “The guy. Who got you out.” 

Jean shook his head. “We lost him in the crowd. Wherever he went after this, it wasn’t with us.”

*

Neil had been walking for so long he couldn’t remember why he had started in the first place. So much of his life in the past few days had become a blur: the lonely walk to the Nest, the infiltration, the assassination, the release of the slaves, the capture by his father. 

The torture. The knives. The loss of his hand. 

Someone had come in after that, lured by the screams, a Raven who unloaded hard on the Butcher and his people and ignored Neil completely, who was bloody and broken and dying on the ground. 

Neil laid with the bodies of his father’s men until he couldn’t stand the smell, and then he thought he might try to walk home, just to see if he could. 

So he stood up and walked out and there weren’t many left to stop him and none that bothered when they did see him, because Neil looked dead on his feet, but he wanted to walk home. He wanted to go home. 

He wanted to go home. 

*

Andrew and Wymack left to find Neil and found him in a heap of bloody, tattered clothes and lying in the middle of the road just outside the mountains. 

*

Neil was about to fall asleep when he heard his name. 

“Andrew?” he rasped. He thought he heard Andrew calling his name. Soon, a shadow fell over his face, and when Neil opened his eyes, he did see Andrew leaning over him, blocking out the sun.

Andrew said, “Neil, get up.” 

“I can’t.”

“Neil, get up now.” 

“Andrew, I’m dying.” 

“No, you’re not. Get up.” 

“Andrew, I lost my hand.” 

“I’ll cauterize it.”

“I think it’s a little late for that.” 

“Neil, get up.”

“Andrew.” Neil’s voice was very soft.

“No.” Andrew’s voice finally cracked. Neil wanted to hold his hand but he couldn’t move his body anymore.

“Andrew. Thank you.”

“Stop it.”

“Thank you for finding me.”

“Shut up.”

“I thought I was going to be alone for this.”

“Neil, stop. Get up.”

“I can’t.” 

“You can. Get the fuck up.” __

“Andrew—” Wymack said when Neil didn’t say anything. He hadn’t realized his eyes were closed again.

“ _ No!  _ Neil, goddammit, you have to get up!”

But Neil was already falling asleep.


	5. i'm on my long journey home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi thanks again for going thru this with me. im posting early because i wrote another fic im very excited to post later today as i am a garbage person lmao
> 
> i wrote this story because i was reading something that didn't go the way i wanted so i made my own. originally andrew was not going to be medicated and this was going to focus only on andrew loving neil and realizing he made a mistake and neil martyring himself anyways. but i needed a reason for them to fall in love, so we got andrew going thru withdrawal, and that ended up meaning more to me than whatever else i wrote of this, which is why this chapter is so short
> 
> so thanks for being here and see u next time ☺

Neil woke to a knock on his door. His throat was too scratchy and dry for him to call out a response, but whoever knocked didn’t wait for one. 

Nicky came in, and his face brightened when he noticed that Neil was awake. “Hey! You’re up!” He walked to stand beside Neil and Neil realized he was elevated off the ground, most likely on a table, and he was in a room he didn’t recognize and all alone. 

“Why did you knock if you thought I was asleep?” Neil rasped, and Nicky laughed. 

“Habit, I guess? Anyways, how are you feeling? I better go get Andrew.”

_ Andrew _ , Neil thought. “What happened?” he asked. 

“Well, Coach and Andrew found you just out of the mountains, and you weren’t in good shape. Apparently Andrew thought you died in his arms and freaked out. When Wymack came to check your pulse and found you still had one, he got Andrew to calm down and then they carried you back here.”

“Carried?” 

Nicky’s grin softened. “Yeah, Andrew brought you all the way back here. Wouldn’t let anyone touch you except the doctor. Freaked out when Kevin was the only available blood donor. Good thing you sent those people to us, or you’d probably be dead by now.”

“Yeah,” Neil whispered. He closed his eyes. Everything hurt, and he was so tired, and he didn’t want to open his eyes again until Andrew was here. 

*

Nicky eventually left and when the door opened again, it was Andrew come to see him. 

Neil, drowsy and slightly out of it, smiled when Andrew came in, and Andrew immediately frowned. 

“Are you fucking stupid?” he demanded, and Neil noticed that with each step closer he took to Neil, the angier he got. 

Neil reached for Andrew as soon as he stood beside Neil’s operating table, glad that his closest arm was the one with a hand still on it. Andrew did not reach back. “Yeah,” Neil said, wiggling his fingers and waiting. 

Andrew smacked his hand still. “If you ever do that again, I will not come back for you.” 

Neil wiggled his fingers again, now resting under Andrew’s strong grip. “Good thing there’s only one Riko Moriyama then, huh?”

“You should be glad there’s only one of me.”

“But isn’t there? Technically two of you?”

“I will fucking kill you.”

“But Andrew,” Neil whined. “I only have one hand. You wouldn’t kill a cripple, would you? In these trying times? I have a family to feed.”

Andrew finally gripped Neil’s fingers, curling his whole hand around Neil’s, and everything felt so warm. “You still have one working hand.”

Neil fiddled and pulled and tugged until Andrew finally relented to Neil pulling their joined fingers up to his mouth. Neil didn’t kiss him because he didn’t want Andrew to let go, but he did rest their hands on his lips and closed his eyes to the feel of Andrew. “And that’s enough for you?” he asked, goading him with the first conversation they'd ever had.

Andrew shifted his hands around until they were cupping the scars on Neil’s cheeks. The touch on his wounds hurt, but Neil didn't pull away.

Andrew said, "Yes."

*

That night, after Neil had spent the day refamilarizing himself with the Foxes old and new and finding the way around his home all over again, Andrew wouldn’t let Neil follow him out of the nest of beds. Instead of standing to leave, Andrew scooted over until he was beside Neil on one mattress. He rested a heavy palm on Neil’s waist, the other worming its way under Neil’s neck. 

As soon as Neil wriggled his body closer into Andrew’s and sighed contentedly with his forehead resting on Andrew’s collarbone, Andrew whispered, “You stink.” 

Neil smiled. “I didn’t have time to bathe after my surgery.” 

“Too busy following me around like a lost puppy,” Andrew lamented. He slid his hand from Neil’s hip to his back and started rubbing slow circles, pulling him closer and burying his nose in Neil’s hair.

“Sorry,” Neil sighed. He wanted to say something witty, but he felt himself start to fall under the warmth and security and all that Andrew offered, all that the future promised. 

He fell asleep, but he knew that whatever he woke up to in the morning, Andrew would be there. 

**Author's Note:**

> where my bluegrass homies at? this fic’s title and subsequent chapter titles all come from the song [long journey home](https://open.spotify.com/track/1X9IlWbEJagG8mvdsn2fd8?si=oeCLNdY_Rc-EVeglvwt20g) by the bedquilt ramblers and ben babbitt. i have a headcanon that andrew listens to bluegrass (because that’s what we do, right? we project? lmao andrew listens to bluegrass u can’t change my mind) and one day i’ll write it into a fic--but not this one


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